Xuan 2
"S-So-ryong! So-ryong!"
"Kid!? Snap out of it! What's wrong with him all of a sudden?"
Just as So-ryong was about to pitch face-first into the campfire, two pairs of hands shot out like lightning and seized his arms, while a web of silk snared the back of his neck.
Hwa-eun and Seolpyo, who had been sitting on either side of him, each grabbed an arm; Yo-hwa, behind him, fired a strand of silk that stopped his body cold.
Kishi!
Yanked back an instant before he would have crashed into the flames, So-ryong's body now tipped gently backward instead. The moment he was laid on the ground as if he had merely fallen asleep, Hwa-eun and Seolpyo bent over him with startled faces and began to examine him.
The first thing Hwa-eun checked was his eyes.
She had already inspected him twice before he ate the white ants, but she needed to know whether his consciousness had simply grown hazy for some other reason, or whether some toxin had paralyzed him. She pried open his eyelids and looked quickly—only to find So-ryong's eyes dull and unfocused.
If he had fainted, the whites should have been showing. If he had been paralyzed, the light of awareness should still have been there. Yet the eyes behind those half-closed lids looked as though the soul itself had slipped away.
"Why?"
"Don't tell me there was poison after all?"
"No. It doesn't seem like poison. I checked twice before he ate them, and even now the symptoms don't look like poisoning."
The startled Shintu pressed her in an urgent voice, but Hwa-eun had clearly verified that the white ants carried no toxin before So-ryong ate them, and So-ryong himself—who knew poisons better than anyone—had said the same. Even now the look in his eyes simply did not match any ordinary poisoning or paralysis.
That was when Seolpyo, who had already been taking his pulse, caught Hwa-eun's hand.
From the lips of the dazed Seolpyo came words Hwa-eun had heard once before.
"Beast… Beast Heart Technique…"
"Beast Heart Technique? You mean—?"
The Beast Heart Technique was one of the root arts of the Beast Palace, incorporated into the Five Poisons Returning to Origin Divine Art that So-ryong cultivated. The memory of the last time Cho had evolved into the Flying Centipede—and had put So-ryong to sleep for a full fortnight—rose instantly to the surface.
"Cho! Cho! Come down here!"
Hwa-eun hurriedly called down Cho, who was hovering somewhere in the sky on So-ryong's orders to keep watch. She feared that Cho might have grown again and triggered another incident like the last one. Cho had recently shed her skin once already, and right now she was the only real suspect. Seolpyo and the Beast Palace Lord himself had once warned that communing with a poison beast of the Ten Great Poisons' caliber could scramble a person's mind.
When Cho came fluttering down without the faintest idea what was happening, Hwa-eun questioned her urgently.
Tsurut?
"Cho, Papa collapsed. Do you know anything about this?"
Tsurut!? Tsuru!
Only then did Cho notice So-ryong lying behind Hwa-eun. She let out a cry that was unmistakably one of shock. Exactly what she was saying was impossible to tell, but the fact that Cho herself was flustered suggested she was not the cause.
Seolpyo recovered her wits and offered the same opinion.
"It's not Cho. I don't feel the same Beast Heart Technique energy as last time. And if Cho were the cause, wouldn't she have fallen asleep with him like before?"
Hwa-eun thought it over and realized Seolpyo was right. Back then Cho had sunk into the same sleep as So-ryong; if Cho were responsible now, she would be unconscious as well.
"Then… could it be Hyang!?"
"Hyang? W-wait, now that you mention it—!"
Hyang was currently dozing on Hwa-eun's shoulder, apparently still sulking from the scolding she had received earlier for not listening to her father. What if this was not ordinary sleep?
Given that she had not woken even amid all this uproar, Hyang was the next most suspicious. Hwa-eun called to her quietly. If both of them had been put under by the Beast Heart Technique, forcing her awake would be unwise—but she still needed to confirm whether Hyang had truly lost consciousness the way So-ryong had.
"Hya… Hyang? Are you asleep?"
Under the tense gazes of Hwa-eun and Seolpyo there was no response at first, and for a moment they truly believed it was the Beast Heart Technique. Then Hyang, as if something itched, brushed her antennae with a foreleg and began making the exact same soft sounds she always made when she slept.
Tsuru… tsuru…
She was definitely just sleeping. Even in the middle of this chaos the little creature was peacefully scratching her antennae with a foreleg, so deeply under that someone could have carried her off without her noticing.
Seolpyo, wanting to double-check, quickly laid a hand on Hyang's body and shook her head.
"Doesn't seem to be Hyang either. I don't feel any Beast Heart Technique energy from her."
"Then why all of a sudden? It isn't that thing you mentioned before, is it—having your mind swallowed by the beasts?"
Hwa-eun asked with a worried face, fearing that the Beast Heart Technique might have allowed the poison beasts to devour So-ryong's mind. Seolpyo shook her head.
"No. If he were being swallowed he'd be thrashing around like a beast. Right now he just looks like he's asleep."
"Th-then… what on earth…"
If it was none of those things, the situation was truly strange. While Hwa-eun stared down at So-ryong with growing anxiety, Seolpyo suddenly clapped her hands as if she had figured something out.
"Ah! The ones So-ryong linked with through the Beast Heart Technique aren't just Cho and Hyang, right?"
"Not just Cho and Hyang… Ah! How could I have forgotten that?"
She had been so startled by So-ryong's collapse that it had slipped her mind, but when she thought carefully she realized So-ryong had formed a heart-link through the Beast Heart Technique with one more besides Cho and Hyang.
"Bin?"
"Bin's still out there."
Their youngest daughter, who had left home.
Bin.
When I opened my eyes, what filled my vision was a space choked with pitch-black, smoke-like fog.
No matter which way I turned, all I could see was that inky mist. How I was even able to perceive black fog when there was not a single point of light, I had no idea—yet that smoke-like darkness registered with eerie clarity.
"Wh-what is this?"
The panic lasted only a moment. The first thought that rose in a situation like this was inevitable.
Don't tell me… I've been trapped inside some kind of inner world!?
When Seol-nui and my adoptive father taught me the Beast Heart Technique, the warning they had drilled into me was that my mind could be swallowed by Cho's spirit if I wasn't careful. Spiritual beasts possessed wills far stronger than a human's; they had worried I might be the one consumed.
That was why, finding myself able to think relatively clearly in this dark, lightless place, I wondered whether my consciousness had been locked away somewhere while Cho's spirit took over my body.
Wasn't that how it always went in comics? The hero gets his body stolen for some reason, and then he just sits huddled in a dark corner of his own mind, sinking into depression until someone from the outside comes to rescue him?
"Damn it. I'm not out there doing something weird right now, am I? No—if Cho took over, she wouldn't do anything like that… right?"
That much felt certain. I decided to call for Cho's help first.
Cho would never deliberately seize my body. This had almost certainly happened because her spirit, being that of a spiritual beast, was simply too lofty and powerful. And if our minds were still linked, she would definitely try to help me.
There's no way my daughter would do this to her dad on purpose. No way.
"Cho! Cho! Daddy's here! Help me!"
I shouted myself hoarse calling for her, and the black fog began to heave and ripple as if it were alive. That had to be Cho reacting.
Oh! There's definitely a response!
It felt exactly like she was answering my voice. Watching the black fog writhe every time I called her name, I could tell Cho was flustered as well.
I decided to praise her first so she wouldn't be too scared, then ask her to pull me out.
"This definitely wasn't on purpose, right? It was probably a mistake, or something that happened even though you didn't want it to, yeah? Our Cho is a good girl. Our Cho is the daughter who loves Daddy the most, so let's think of a way to get Daddy out of here."
I called for her in every direction, pleading for help—and then, as if the fog had grown angry, it seemed to darken into thunderclouds. A moment later one side of the mist parted, revealing a narrow path.
A narrow path with light shining along it.
It felt exactly as though the light itself were telling me to come this way, so I hurried toward it. It looked as if Cho were showing me the way out.
"That's my girl! My pretty daughter!"
I praised her as I followed the light, certain she had found a solution. After walking only a short while, a human figure appeared where the light ended.
At a glance the presence felt similar to Cho, whom I had seen once before.
"Cho!"
I called her name and sprinted toward her. But when I reached the woman, what met my eyes was not Cho.
"W-who…?"
The Cho in my memory had been a strangely alluring woman with blue hair and blue eyes. The woman standing before me had jet-black hair and jet-black eyes. She carried that same mysterious air Cho had, yet she was someone I had never seen before.
Wh-what?
Worse, her expression looked thoroughly furious. I blinked in shock, and the woman let out a sigh that seemed to say she found me utterly exasperating.
The next thought that leapt into my head was blackening.
Don't tell me Cho… b-blackened!?
Turning completely black usually meant a character had gone dark. Blue Cho becoming black could only mean she had blackened. Afraid that something had caused Cho to turn, I asked in a careful voice,
"Cho?"
The woman's eyes grew terrifying. Even if Cho had blackened, there was no way she would look at her father with eyes that cold. I immediately realized I had grabbed the wrong end of the stick.
"Ah, not you? Th-then… who are you?"
Don't tell me it's the queen ant? No—I didn't circulate the Beast Heart Technique to register anything.
I thought carefully. The last thing I had eaten before this happened was roasted white ants. Was it possible that the white-ant queen was a spiritual beast, that the worker ants had exchanged nutrients with her before dying, and that by consuming their bodily fluids I had somehow registered the queen?
But that didn't make sense either. Registering a poison beast required circulating a special formula of the Beast Heart Technique while consuming the creature's fluids. There was no way an unwanted registration could simply happen on its own.
Under the woman's sharp glare I found myself involuntarily stepping backward.
Then her expression suddenly shifted to one of panic. She whipped her head away so she wouldn't have to look at me—and snatched at the collar of my robe by the shoulder.
I stared at the place she had seized, then asked in a dazed voice,
"…Bin?"
The spot she had grabbed was exactly the place our tsundere Bin always nipped when she was pretending she didn't want to show herself. Whenever she got angry or tried to slip away, she would give that collar a little bite as if to say don't go. And that was precisely where this woman was holding me now.
Her face flooded with surprise and emotion, and an instant later she threw herself into my arms.
And then, just as always, the feeling that Daddy was the best in the world came rushing over me.
Of course this dad would know that much.
I had stumbled a little at the beginning, but I apparently still qualified as a father. My consciousness began to grow hazy.
"Bin!"
When I opened my eyes, the familiar ceiling came into view.
I sat bolt upright calling Bin's name, and two startled women's voices answered at once.
"So-ryong, are you awake?"
"Kid! You back with us?"
I turned my head and found Hwa-eun and Seol-nui staring at me with wide eyes.
"Where…? How…?"
I was lying in my own quarters in the Tang Clan, on my own bed.
I had seen Bin inside my mind, but my last clear memory was of going out to look for heavenly silkworms, discovering the white ants, and eating them. When I asked how I had ended up here, Hwa-eun came closer and gently brushed my forehead as she spoke.
"I would have left you where you were, but Seol-eonni said it would be better to move you closer to the clan, so we brought you here."
Apparently they had carried me back to the estate after I collapsed.
"Right—B-Bin? Has Bin come back?"
The moment Hwa-eun mentioned Bin's name I asked for news of her, but Hwa-eun only shook her head.
"No. So this collapse really was because of Bin, then?"
"Probably…"
I let the word trail off at the answer that she still had not returned—and that was when a sudden uproar erupted outside.
Thud-thud-thud-thud.
A low rumbling of the earth rose, and the startled voices of warriors began to shout from beyond the walls.
"S-stop it!"
"That way!"
"It's heading for the Four-Harmony Courtyard!"
I tried to push myself up from the bed, but my body refused to move properly after lying still for so long. I asked Hwa-eun and Seol-nui for help.
"Hurry—outside."
They had already sensed something from the noise and did not refuse. The moment they helped me walk out the door, the ground of the rear garden began to heave and rise in a long, continuous ridge as if a giant mole were tunneling straight toward us—until it erupted right in front of my quarters.
Fwoosh!
From the earth burst a colossal centipede whose glossy, jet-black body I had never seen before.
Even after crawling through the dirt, her carapace shone like polished obsidian—an abyss-black so pure it seemed bottomless. She looked unmistakably a size larger than Cho after Cho had become the Flying Centipede.
Tsururrr.
I couldn't help it—the sheer beauty of that real, living black tore a scream out of me.
I-I'm losing my mind!
"Gyaaaaah!"
There was no doubt about it. Our Bin, who had left home, had just come back upgraded.